‘Place of hermitage or place of religious retreat’. This was an early borrowing into OIr of the Latin desertum, ‘desert, a deserted or solitary place’ (see Watson 1926, 256–7). This connotation was clearly understood by the writer of the Vita Sancti Servani, c.1200, who translates it into Latin as desertum. For its connections with St Serf, see KDT, DSX Introduction above. For a possible association of the place-name element dìseart with the Céli Dé (Culdee) movement of the eighth and ninth centuries in Ireland, see Flannigan 1982, 72.

OS Pathf. also has Little Dysart at NT291965. For Gordon’s Muir of Dysert, see next.